Orphan Black: "Mingling Its Own Nature With It"Review

As it turned out, Sarah, Kira and Felix’s on-the-road adventure was a pretty brief one, as this hour would see Felix quickly return back home and, by the end, Sarah taken by Daniel Rosen. But in the midst of that, we met an important new character, Cal. Michiel Huisman plays Cal, and it must be said, the Dutch actor – previously known for roles on Treme and Nashville – is having quite the TV moment, simultaneously appearing on Game of Thrones (as the new Daario) and now Orphan Black. Considering he’s a potential romantic interest for Emilia Clarke on one series and now a past (and present) romantic interest for Tatiana Maslany on the other and I feel safe declaring him the envy of many a geek fan.

The big reveal of course is that Cal is Kira’s father. Cal seems to be a good guy and Huisman infused him with an easy likability and earnestness as he dealt with the surprise of learning he was a father with appropriate skepticism (“Is this a scam?”) and then a quick openheartedness to the daughter he’d just met. Of course, Orphan Black has taught us to be wary of pretty much all love interests, so it’s wait and see time if another shoe will drop with Cal. It certainly felt notable that his career was once as someone making “Mini drone pollinators” for bees, on a show where someone has done quite a bit of pollenating with human life, when it comes to these clones.

It felt a bit under-motivated to have Felix take off as quickly as he did. It seemed like they got there, Cal arrived and Felix immediately ditched his beloved sister and niece, despite knowing their lives were in danger – using Alison’s play as a flimsy excuse. It would have felt more natural if we got the idea they’d been at that cabin a few weeks, better establishing Felix going stir crazy and perhaps some actual conflict with Cal, to make Felix go to that “There’s no place for me here!”, ahem, place.

"My plan to become super well-known at Comic-Con is going really well this spring..."

The fact that so many different groups are at play here continues to be a fun element. I loved Rosen hiding as Henrik -- I guess I’ll call him “Hank” going forward – and his men arrived at the same Mrs. S-pacified site they were all investigating.

Hank is a very intriguing new addition. His calm insistence to his daughter, Grace, that Helena is now a part of their family gives him just the right aura of unsettling friendliness. We know he’s capable of horrible things, but he’s just so damn good-natured in his approach. Helena continues to be a surprisingly passive presence thus far in Season 2, but we’ll see what happens now that Hank’s followers went full creepy cult with her. Hank strapping his hand to hers certainly was effectively unsettling, despite being such a small thing, comparatively.

Even with Art now helping Clone Club, the cop aspects of the series is still an odd element, but this episode attempted to bring things together more as Angie attempted to get cozy to Alison. It was very gratifying to see Alison immediately suspicious of Angie, though it also made sense that Alison – never the best judge of exactly what is going on around her, even if she knows something is up – made the leap that Angie was a second Monitor.

As amusing as Alison’s terrible-looking musical, Blood Ties, has been, this is probably about as much of it as we need. But it looks likely that we’re pretty much through with that, now that we got to opening night and Alison took a fall right off the freaking stage.

Meanwhile, Cosima’s look at the recordings left behind by Jennifer, the first of the clones to get sick and die, were poignant and expertly captured by Maslany – both as the poor, dying girl on those videos and as Cosima, whose heart broke seeing one of her fellow clones go through that… knowing it may be her fate too.

The Verdict

It may seem like Orphan Black is already bursting at the seams with characters, but Kira's father is a pretty notable person to finally meet, considering how important it is that Sarah was able to have a baby at all in the storyline. Michiel Huisman made a strong debut as Cal, while Cosima's look at poor Jennifer's life and death -- quite literally in the latter case, as she saw and even examined her corpse -- was appropriately meaningful.

Great

We met an important part of Sarah's past, while Cosima saw her potential future.